How i broke my fictional league

Cadieux39 · 09-21-2015, 11:27 AM

For background of my Fictional league take a look at an earlier post i made a few weeks ago.

This weekend I broke my league, consider this a warning for those who run fictional leagues, historical leagues or look to expand leagues.

I had a 24 team league with AAA and AA affiliations. After 8 seasons i wanted to expand to a league of 26 teams.

I tried the expansion wizard, which gave me an error. "Could not expand because a sub-league will have un-even number of teams" error... I admit, I did not realize the implications of ignoring this warning. I'm a Hockey guy, a football guy, baseball managing is a recent discovery. Im oblivious on how an MLB schedule is built.

I think if i had expanded both teams into the same sub league all this may have been avoided. But i did not... I wanted one east, one west...

Since i could not expand using the wizard i expanded the league by going into the league settings, and edited the league teams and structure. (I do not recommend expanding this way)

I created 1 team for the west sub league and 1 team for my east sub league... Following that i did the same for AAA and AA so that these new teams had affiliates in the minors. All was well i though. 26 team league, 13 teams per sub league.

I after i finished my season i realized, i had only played 115 games. My normal season was 124... Other teams had played 117 and some even 118 games... I looked at the AAA and AA affiliates and their schedule was broken as well.

OOTP could not create an even schedule, with balanced home and road games, and where all the teams play the same number of games...

From here i broke my league pretty severely, and I don't know how I did it... I spent an hour fixing and modifying the Schedule so that all teams played 124 games, and all teams had 62 home and away. Why OOTP could not figure this out i don't understand. But OOTP seems to go bananas if there is an uneven sub league.

Finally as i started the next season... all my players had their names randomized, all historical retired players, the current rosters, everyones name, ethnicity, moral, personality had been randomized.

I don't know why all of the players in my league got modified, and of course... With Auto-save and only a single save file. I fear my league has been broken beyond repair.

If i could preload a save file from before my forced expansion I would absolutely take it.

**I Should note, I had a 28 team NCAA feeder league, i expanded and added 2 teams to the NCAA league to make it 30, I expanded and created these new teams using the "edit league structure" in the league settings. This did not mess the NCAA 50 game schedule, everything was still balanced and functional. My NCAA league has only 1 sub league, maybe that is why it didn't break? Perhaps feeder leagues don't run the same way as major leagues... I thought a forced expansion was safe as it had no negative effect on my feeder league. I was wrong.**

Goodbye "Professional Baseball League" 8 good seasons and 40 hours well spent. Lots of mistakes were made and lessons learned. Hopefully my next fictional league won't be broken.

Orioles1966 · 09-21-2015, 12:04 PM

I've had that happen before. I make sure that there are an even amount of divisions and then with the division that was left out ,I just add later or make them expansion teams.

09-21-2015, 11:27 AM	#1
Cadieux39 Minors (Single A) Join Date: Sep 2015 Location: Canada Posts: 65	How i broke my fictional league For background of my Fictional league take a look at an earlier post i made a few weeks ago. This weekend I broke my league, consider this a warning for those who run fictional leagues, historical leagues or look to expand leagues. I had a 24 team league with AAA and AA affiliations. After 8 seasons i wanted to expand to a league of 26 teams. I tried the expansion wizard, which gave me an error. "Could not expand because a sub-league will have un-even number of teams" error... I admit, I did not realize the implications of ignoring this warning. I'm a Hockey guy, a football guy, baseball managing is a recent discovery. Im oblivious on how an MLB schedule is built. I think if i had expanded both teams into the same sub league all this may have been avoided. But i did not... I wanted one east, one west... Since i could not expand using the wizard i expanded the league by going into the league settings, and edited the league teams and structure. (I do not recommend expanding this way) I created 1 team for the west sub league and 1 team for my east sub league... Following that i did the same for AAA and AA so that these new teams had affiliates in the minors. All was well i though. 26 team league, 13 teams per sub league. I after i finished my season i realized, i had only played 115 games. My normal season was 124... Other teams had played 117 and some even 118 games... I looked at the AAA and AA affiliates and their schedule was broken as well. OOTP could not create an even schedule, with balanced home and road games, and where all the teams play the same number of games... From here i broke my league pretty severely, and I don't know how I did it... I spent an hour fixing and modifying the Schedule so that all teams played 124 games, and all teams had 62 home and away. Why OOTP could not figure this out i don't understand. But OOTP seems to go bananas if there is an uneven sub league. Finally as i started the next season... all my players had their names randomized, all historical retired players, the current rosters, everyones name, ethnicity, moral, personality had been randomized. I don't know why all of the players in my league got modified, and of course... With Auto-save and only a single save file. I fear my league has been broken beyond repair. If i could preload a save file from before my forced expansion I would absolutely take it. I Should note, I had a 28 team NCAA feeder league, i expanded and added 2 teams to the NCAA league to make it 30, I expanded and created these new teams using the "edit league structure" in the league settings. This did not mess the NCAA 50 game schedule, everything was still balanced and functional. My NCAA league has only 1 sub league, maybe that is why it didn't break? Perhaps feeder leagues don't run the same way as major leagues... I thought a forced expansion was safe as it had no negative effect on my feeder league. I was wrong. Goodbye "Professional Baseball League" 8 good seasons and 40 hours well spent. Lots of mistakes were made and lessons learned. Hopefully my next fictional league won't be broken.

09-21-2015, 12:04 PM	#2
Orioles1966 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2012 Posts: 2,869	I've had that happen before. I make sure that there are an even amount of divisions and then with the division that was left out ,I just add later or make them expansion teams.